Record International Revenues In 2012 For UK Music Licensing Company PPL

Music licensing company PPL has today announced that its international revenues in 2012 grew by 13% from £32.4m in 2011 to £36.6m.

The recent global success of UK music, including performers such as Adele and One Direction amongst many, has been a critical factor but the continued increase in the number of deals now means that PPL is collecting in more countries for more performers and record companies than ever before. In addition PPL's ongoing investment in IT development has enabled greater efficiencies leading to the identification and management of more repertoire and simplifying the entire collections and registration process.

In 2012 PPL concluded seven new deals in European countries - Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary Latvia, Lithuania and Portugal. These new deals now mean that the company has 62 bilateral agreements in 34 different countries. In addition, following deals concluded in 2011 and 2012, PPL received payments for the first time from Croatia (HUZIP), Czech Republic (INTERGRAM), Estonia (EEL), Hungary (EJI), Iceland (SFH), New Zealand (PPNZ), Portugal (GDA and Audiogest), Russia (VOIS) and Ukraine (UMA). PPL was also able to increase the area of rights managed in Norway (to now include cable retransmission through an agreement with NORWACO) and, in the Netherlands, via an agreement with NORMA that now extends PPL rights to include revenue from the lending of CD's in public libraries.

PPL's international services are dedicated to the active collection of international revenues via agreements with other music licensing companies around the world. This means that internationally mandated PPL members receive monies when their repertoire is used in the countries with which PPL has reciprocal agreements. These include the USA as well most European countries through to the Asian and South American continents with deals in Japan and Brazil – one of the fastest growing countries in regard to performance rights. PPL's international collection service costs between 2% to 10% as the actual costs of collection are charged and these vary from country to country. In total the deals that the company has in place represent over 90% of the total global value of performance rights.

"The level of PPL's growth in 2012 in the area of international collections has been very encouraging and shows our complete commitment to developing this part of our business on behalf of all our members," said Laurence Oxenbury, Director of International. "It is important that we maintain a very high level of service but that we also operate in a cost-effective manner."

PPL has just over 60,000 members with numbers growing at approximately 350 per month of which 90% now sign up to the company's international collection service in addition to mandating their rights to PPL in the UK. During 2012 nearly 22,000 members received an allocation of international revenues – an increase of 15% over the previous year. In addition, 1690 more members last year benefitted from PPL being granted 'Qualified Intermediary' (QI) status* by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) in the US.

"I am pleased with the growth we have shown in this area of business and it is a credit to our International team," said Peter Leathem, CEO, PPL. "This is a key revenue stream for the company and I am delighted that an enormous portion of our membership sign up for the service that we offer. Having made the decision to invest in both people and systems in order to provide a first class service to performers and record companies, these results, and we still have a way to go, are proof that we have already achieved much. Finally, I would like to thank our colleagues and counterparts around the world for their hard work and co-operation because it is critical that we have open and robust relationships with other overseas music licensing companies at a time when performance rights are such an important revenue stream."